Hello anyone and everyone who may stop here and read about my poker journey. This post will be significantly longer than what I plan/envision for the rest of this thread, but I find it important and relevant to state some things from the beginning. So, while I sit here, rewatching The Sopranos for the fifth time and drinking a Dos Equis Amber, I hope this will give some insight and direction into my journey.

Introduction

I am 22 years-old and recently graduated from a Midwestern private university. I still live in the Midwest (for now). My poker journey starts with walking into the room of one of my best friends while he was rewatching the 2016 WSOP Main. At first, we didn't know why he was watching poker on TV. But after awhile, we were enamored; getting excited and yelling over all-ins, finding characters to root for, and seemingly finding ourselves involved in a world much deeper than meets the eye. Soon after, due to rather unfortunate circumstances, we were forced to move out of our home over close to two years.
We found ourselves in the corner of our campus, away from everyone, and no way of entertaining ourselves. Naturally, we found a set of poker chips and a deck of cards and started with a $5 buy-in SnG. Before we started, I specifically remember going to the bathroom so I could memorize a hand ranking chart. We played cash games and SnGs for months on end, but really only myself and another of my friends really stuck with the obsession. We started studying, consuming content, and playing online (with rather degenerate results). However, knowing myself and who I am from a professional and personal standpoint, knew this wouldn't be the end of it for me, even with graduation looming.

Present

Long story short, I now work a full-time, decent paying job in Louisville, KY. However, I plan on moving, with my gf, to Tampa, Florida in early October to pursue my poker dream. Once there, I plan on playing live NL cash until I have my BR under control (more of this to come). She will be going to nursing school and we will hopefully be starting fresh in a state and region completely unfamiliar to us and definitely not what we're used to in the Midwest (no more snow!!!).
This leads me into what I want this thread to be. Since I don't really have any "poker friends" and my parents/family don't really understand poker, it's hard not having anyone to talk or vent to, or discuss and get stuff off of my mind. I definitely consider myself a thinker (and very much so an over thinker), thus, I think this will really help me organize my thoughts, envision my goals, and hopefully help some people along the way who find themselves in situations similar to my own.
I will be updating this thread frequently. I plan on it mostly consisting of my goals, results, thoughts, rants, and some hand histories. I really just hope that out of this, I can properly channel my thoughts, desires, and goals into manifestation. So, with that being said, I will now go through what I see as my goals, my current situation, and plans for the future.

Future?

To begin, I think I should explain my current situation and how that affects how I will be moving forward. I work between 35-37 hours a week at a job that pays for all of my monthly rent, bills, expenses, etc. comfortably. So, at the start, I will be playing a fairly shallow BR, because I don't have to worry about using poker profits to pay for my monthly nut. I will also be adding money from work that is leftover to my BR when needed, so I'm not too worried about BR management in a strict sense. With that being said, I'm not going to be hopping in the 5/10 streets or the Main Event quite yet. I'll be starting with a BR of about $2k. I will be playing predominantly 1/2 NL ($300 max) at my local casino with the occasional low stakes MTT flick in. My short term goals, first and foremost, are to put in volume and build my poker BR separate from my life roll.
When I get to Tampa, I want to move up to 2/5 NL and 5/5 PLO as fast as possible, so at the moment, I think volume, study, and BR building are the most important factors for my situation. As far as specific goals, I really have two from the start:
1. Use poker as a vehicle to live a life by my own means and desires. I don't want to work a 9-5 job. I want to be able to make money when I want, where I want, and do as I please. I think poker is a beautiful thing for this reason, among others. Do I want to win a million dollars? Of course. Would I like to someday crush mixed games in Bobby's Room? Duh. Will I look back on my life as a failure if I don't accomplish these things? Absolutely not. I want to be smart about my life and career, and make money through other avenues eventually (with smart investing), but I want poker to be my vehicle.
2. More specifically, I want to be a versatile poker player. From the start, I will be spending the bulk of my time studying and playing NL cash. Eventually, I'll start working on PLO cash. But eventually, I want to be as versatile as possible. I never want to get to my casino and see the 2/5 tables as bad games then have to leave or sit at a reg infested table. I want to extract value from all different areas of poker. I want to be able to hold my own and make money anywhere from mid-high stakes NL and PLO cash, to good value NL MTT's, all the way to Mixed Games (MTT and Cash). This will take a lot of time, work, study, patience, and volume, but I'm willing.

To end this, I want to just say that I welcome all feedback, discussion, insight, whatever. Like I said, I really wanted to do this to be able to discuss and have a conversation about this passion and journey of mine. However, I will please ask that if you have something to say, just say it respectfully. I will be updating this thread regularly, so if you want to follow along, please do so!! Cheers!!

Here for my first update of the thread! Although, not too exciting as I see nobody has gotten involved in the thread quite yet. Anyways, I will just give brief overview of my weekend playing.

I played two rather short 1/2 sessions at the Horseshoe Southern Indiana. The first was on Saturday and i played about 5 and a half hours, resulting in a -$78.00 session. Although I didn't play as long as I initially planned and I lost money, it was definitely nice to get back on the felt and get some cards in the air. I think I played okay, made a few mistakes, but nothing too crazy. I will post a hand from this session at the end.

On Sunday, I only played two and a half hours because my parents were randomly driving through Louisville and wanted to stop to have lunch with me. However, it ended up being a profitable session of +$185.00. I think i played pretty well and the table was actually a lot of fun and had a lot of action going on so I'm bummed I couldn't play longer, but I'm definitely going to be putting in more hours this coming week.

Hand History

1/2 NL - $300.00 Max
Hero and Villain are about $400.00 effective. Villain is an older reg who likes action and is constantly trying to get bigger games running. I sense he's a well-off, retired gentleman who plays pretty well but doesn't care too much about the money being played.

Villain opens from MP to $10, I call in the BB with 87o (some have said this is too loose of a defend but I think it's pretty standard, let me know what you all think)

Flop: 8 7 3 two diamonds (no diamond in hand) - Pot $20

I check/raise a C-bet of $15 with top two on a pretty dynamic board, villain calls.

Turn: 10 of diamonds - Pot $120

I think this is probably the second or third worst turn card in the deck. It gives him tons of combos that beat us, or have tons and tons of equity against our hand. He is uncapped and the way he plays, I think he has tons of flushes, pair + straight draws, sets, overpairs with big diamonds, and even some made straights.

I check/fold a bet of $100 (almost pot-sized). In hindsight, I think I should've seen a river card. Whether that means I check/call or continue on the turn (maybe a down-bet to see a cheap river). But I really am not sure about the most optimal line in this spot. Let me know what you think!!

87o is a fairly trivial fold from an MP open to 5x, definitely don't fall in love with unsuited connectors especially in a live game where there is tons of multiway pots.

As hand played, a block bet makes sense but I think a fold is fine given his sizing.

I live in the same state as you and had moved to Florida as well but now im back due to some family things. I am counting down the days to go back to Florida, its just such a better standard of living for me.

The poker in Florida I found similar to Kentucky/Ohio/Indiana area. I would say the regs are better in Florida but there are the occasional donks in Florida that are just insanely bad. There is good poker in Tampa but the best games I found were in Miami and Daytona Beach.

games at the tampa hardrock suck bro

I had never seen so much angling like a saw at the Hardrock. It was crazy people betting and trying to pull it back, verbal stuff that later they would say they didn't say. If I was a dealer there I wouldnt make it a week before I told someone to **** off

What makes them suck? There seem to be tons and tons of games running at the Hard Rock and surrounding rooms constantly (lots of games usually means decent action) and I've heard from friends that play and have played professionally for years in Florida that the games are solid and there's always action to be found somewhere in the area.

What is bringing me to Florida to play (other than quality of living) is the volume of games. Not enough action, and big enough action, in the Midwest. From what I've seen and heard is there are usually plenty of games running in many regions of Florida and always some good action to be found.

Yeah I think after looking at this spot and hearing from others, I either like a small block bet on the turn or, as played, a fold to his almost pot-sized turn bet.

Second Update

I put in two more sessions this past weekend on Friday and Saturday. Saturday was one of my favorite sessions that I can remember playing. The first hour I was pretty spewy and making some stupid mistakes, mostly just VPIP'ing too much. Was in the game for $900 within the first hour of play. However, I chilled out, tightened up, and just started looking for better, lower variance spots. Ended up cashing out for $1,464 after about 6 hours of play for a nice profit on the session.
Saturday I played for about 5 hours and ended the session down $149. It wasn't a day of getting coolered and running super bad, just pretty card dead, not connecting with enough boards, and mostly getting barelled off of medium strength hands the whole session. Overall, I think I played fine though.
This coming weekend I'm not sure what my plan is yet. I could go back to the Horseshoe and continue the 1/2 cash grind. Or I could head to the JACK Casino in Cincy for their JPO. Their Event #1 is a multi-flight $350 buy-in with a decent structure with a 250k GTD. I may go play the last flight on Saturday with plans to fire two bullets and probably play some 1/3 cash after. And then if i make Day 2, play and maybe hop in the 25k GTD turbo deepstack that starts Sunday afternoon. Haven't decided yet.

I will post some hand histories later tonight when I have my notes. Cheers!!

Hand History

1/2 Live ($300 Effective Stack)

Folds around to hero in the LJ with 10d9d, opens to $8. CO calls then BTN makes it $23. Hero calls and CO folds.

Flop comes 8 6 2 rainbow, one diamond.

Hero check/folds to a bet of $25.

Thoughts:
The reason I folded was because of the tiny 3bet and general 1/2 player tendencies. Due to these two reasons, I seriously debated whether or not my over-cards were live or not. However, even though 1/2 live players tend too 3bet VERY light, I think I shouldn't be folding here, at least not a lot. I think if we can comfortably decide that villain is 3betting and then c-betting AKo and AQs combos, then we should float and check/call or check/jam on turns that improve our equity or when we make the nuts. At a deeper stack depth, we can probably even check/raise flop. However, I think folding is reasonable exploitatively too. I think it's a pretty interesting spot to discuss. Thoughts???

No post this past week. Didn't put in a session over the weekend so there wasn't much to report (and it doesn't seem like many people are tuning in anyway lol). So far this week I've been putting in some solid study hours. Nothing crazy or advanced, mostly just reviewing/refreshing some pre-flop fundamentals and studied some material on c-betting and board textures.

This weekend I plan on putting in a pretty decent grind. Looking to play Friday-Sunday and up the total number of hours I play. I'm really looking forward to getting back on the grind and working on applying some of the concepts that I'be been studying/reviewing. Also, I've decided to work on putting in a minimum of 5 hours per session. I think this is a good idea because when you factor in gas and travel cost, it is probably +EV to put in longer sessions.

I will give an update later this weekend, cheers!!